Relations with the Powhatan Indians were tenuous, although trading opportunities were established. An unfamiliar climate, as well as brackish water supply and lack of food, conditions possibly aggravated by a prolonged drought, led to disease and death. Many of the original colonists were upper-class Englishmen, and the colony lacked sufficient laborers and skilled farmers. The first two English women arrived at Jamestown in , and more came in subsequent years.
Men outnumbered women, however, for most of the 17th century. Smith had been instrumental in trading with the Powhatan Indians for food. However, in the fall of he was injured by burning gunpowder and left for England.
Smith never returned to Virginia, but promoted colonization of North America until his death in and published numerous accounts of the Virginia colony, providing invaluable material for historians. Just when the colonists decided to abandon Jamestown in Spring , settlers with supplies arrived from England, eager to find wealth in Virginia. The baptism of Pocahontas in Jamestown before her marriage to John Rolfe. They took a hard line with Powhatan and launched raids against Algonquian villages, killing residents and burning houses and crops.
The English began to build other forts and settlements up and down the James River, and by the fall of had managed to harvest a decent crop of corn themselves. They had also learned other valuable techniques from the Algonquians, including how to insulate their dwellings against the weather using tree bark, and expanded Jamestown into a New Town to the east of the original fort.
A period of relative peace followed the marriage in April of the colonist and tobacco planter John Rolfe to Pocahontas , a daughter of Chief Powhatan who had been captured by the settlers and converted to Christianity. That same year, the first Africans around 50 men, women and children arrived in the English settlement; they had been on a Portuguese slave ship captured in the West Indies and brought to the Jamestown region.
They worked as indentured servants at first the race-based slavery system developed in North America in the s and were most likely put to work picking tobacco.
In March , the Powhatan made a major assault on English settlements in Virginia, killing some to residents a full one-quarter of the population. The attack hit the outposts of Jamestown the hardest, while the town itself received advance warning and was able to mount a defense. In an effort to take greater control of the situation, King James I dissolved the Virginia Company and made Virginia into an official crown colony, with Jamestown as its capital, in The New Town area of Jamestown continued to grow, and the original fort seems to have disappeared after the s.
Colonists, enraged at declining tobacco prices and higher taxes, sought a scapegoat in local tribes who still periodically sparred with settlers and lived on land they hoped to obtain for themselves. A July raid by the Doeg tribe sparked retaliation, and when Governor Berkeley set up a meeting between the two quarreling parties, several tribal chiefs were murdered.
Berkeley refused, so Bacon raided and killed them on his own. Bacon died of dysentery in October, and armed merchant ships from London, followed by forces sent by King Charles II, soon put down the resistance. In , the central statehouse in Jamestown burned down, and Middle Plantation, now known as Williamsburg, replaced it as the colonial capital the following year.
The traditional telling of early Jamestown history portrayed those pioneers as ill-suited for the task. But 20 years of archaeological research at the site of James Fort suggests that Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and many of the artisans, craftsmen, and laborers who accompanied the gentlemen leaders made every effort to build a successful colony. On May 14, , the Virginia Company settlers landed on Jamestown Island to establish an English colony 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Discovery of the exact location of the first fort indicates its site was in a secure place, where Spanish ships could not fire point blank into the fort. Within days of landing, the colonists were attacked by Powhatan Indians.
Three contemporary accounts and a sketch of the fort agree that its walls formed a triangle around a storehouse, church, and a number of houses. Bulwarks raised platforms for cannons were built at the three corners to defend against a possible Spanish attack. But disease, famine, and sporadic attacks from the neighboring Powhatan Indians took a tremendous toll on the population of the settlement. There were also times when trade with the Powhatan revived the colony with food in exchange for glass beads, copper, and iron implements.
Captain John Smith was particularly good at this trade. But his strict leadership made enemies within and without the fort, and a mysterious gunpowder explosion badly injured him and sent him back to England in October Some were purchased by unwed colonists as wives.
England hoped the women would help men create ties to the community and make them less likely to abandon the colony. Women were much less submissive in Jamestown than in England, however, and often fought for their rights and those of their children. In , the Dutch introduced the first captured Africans to America, planting the seeds of a slavery system that evolved into a nightmare of abuse and cruelty that would ultimately divide the nation. By , tobacco was king and daily life for almost everyone in Jamestown revolved around producing and selling tobacco.
In August, the first Africans arrived as indentured servants. Their presence opened the door for Virginia to accept the institution of slavery and eventually replace African indentured servants with African slaves. The next decades in Jamestown brought periods of war and peace with the Indians. More and more colonists arrived, spread out and created new towns and plantations.
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